The major news is cancellations. By now all of you local folks know our schools are closed at least until after April vacation, which means that April 27 the schools may reopen. All parents have been sent a letter with more specifics. Teachers are working on curriculum that can be studied at home. The buildings will be open this week should parents have an immediate need to enter, and updates will be sent by email and posted on the schools’ websites as new information becomes available.

The Southport Island Association (SIA) Ice Breaker, scheduled for next Saturday, March 21, has been cancelled until further notice. Kit and I have been ordered by our medically involved son and daughter-in-law to avoid other physical human contact due to Kit’s Parkinson’s disease and propensity for getting pneumonia, plus, of course, we are among the older generation.

Thanks to our Island Store that announces they will stay open at the usual hours, but with more than usual wiping of surfaces and requiring staff with any symptoms to stay home. In addition Southport Island residents may order groceries, which the store will deliver, leaving the order on the porch or steps so as not to compromise either the deliverer or the recipient. Phone 633-6666 to place your order. When it is safe to gather again in the store, you will see new tables and booths in the back room along with photos by Bob Mitchell decorating the walls and available for sale. New chairs are yet to come.

As to the pounding I expected to hear last week, it has not occurred yet. Those vertical girders, which will support the Thompson Bridge roadway, remain high in the air, so stay turned as to what happens next.

We had hoped to get to Robinson’s Wharf on opening day, but could not arrange our schedules to do so. From the number of cars in the parking lots they did not need the two of us to have a successful first day. Just how local restaurants and inns this summer are going to find workers with foreign students who usually fill those positions unable to come into the country remains to be seen. This can either be an opportunity for our young people to step up to the plate or cause those places to open later than usual or not at all.

At this point I would say life is a mystery unfolding in new ways day by day. We will need patience, creativity, awareness, luck, and good will to see us through. As I write on day three of our seclusion, I am so grateful that we live in such a beautiful place with woods and sea coast to enjoy as well as a good library, if it stays open, and plenty of spring cleaning to keep us busy. I also realize that other than the week in August in 1960 when Kit and I spent our honeymoon on Southport, we have never had a time when we could be together with no schedule, no work, and no child care. We will not look at the stock market, but will just enjoy each other and nature around us.

I realize not everyone can be both constrained and free, but perhaps we can help each other find a bit of peace in a slower pace of life, or perhaps with children at home and work to do, life is not slower at all. In which case take a deep breath and carry on. Some people are having fun. From Mark and Mariann Powell, currently in Florida and Lainey and Jeff Suyematsu comes this news of a good time in Hilton Head. “The Gimbles, Dobens and McArtors of Boothbay Harbor and the Baileys of Barters Island were with us,” writes Mariann. “We golfed and had dinners together each night.” Southporters gathering together in the south and elsewhere shows the strong ties our Southport life builds.